Archive for November, 2015

My theory for how this frost forms is that the clouds actually come down to ground level at night, and everything that’s the right temperature picks up the ice crystals. The longer the weather conditions remain favorable, the longer and more elaborate the crystals become.

This weather is not that uncommon during the Pullman winter (seemy post “Freezing Fog”) but I’ve never seen it happen this early.

Thanksgiving

SEL does a long Thanksgiving weekend instead of Christmas. Sometimes I go visit family, but this year I stayed home. I was invited over for Thanksgiving dinner by a young technician I work with and his wife. They’re Mormons from Idaho. She had prepared LOTS of food. She said it was the first time she’d cooked such a dinner herself. I enjoyed a few hours at their apartment with them and their two little girls.

I spent that evening and the next day getting a signal generator up and running, as part of my electronic art (eArt) project. If you set it just right, the signals look like floating needles (Scientology technical term) on my meters.

Time to organize – continued

The effort to throw out junk, consolidate the rest, organize everything and fit more into less space continues. The signal generator was made using my new “flat form factor” design. It’s rack mount equipment but only about 6 inches deep. More of that’s in the works.

Deeper equipment cabinets and enclosures are more and more being used for storage. The flat equipment fits in sideways, and my older “long” enclosures can go into a bigger rack enclosure when not being used.

Following the news

It’s been cold but peaceful on the Palouse. I wish everyone across the planet who wanted it peaceful could have it that way.

In Syria Russia has been showing NATO how to fight terrorists. NATO, and especially Turkey, seem offended by this. The alternative media claims this is because NATO was secretly helping the terrorists overthrow Assad. (He has a lovely wife, by the way – have you seen photos of her?) NATO is the lesser military arm of the bad guys in the West; the U.S. military being their greater arm. This seems to actually be the case – a very unfortunate state of affairs.

Meanwhile, Corey Goode continues to release transcripts of his video interviews with David Wilcock (the TV shows cost money to watch). These interviews are about the formation of a “breakaway civilization” on earth. This was started in earnest by the Germans in the 1930s. Some call them “Nazis” but these particular Germans don’t seem so interested in all that any more. They have found ways to move about quickly in space, and started colonies on the Moon and Mars. After the war, they got the U.S. “military-industrial complex” (see Eisenhower’s speech) involved in their plan, and they have more and more been letting this planet go to hell as they shift their attention to their off-planet operations.

Seems all quite fanciful, but would explain a lot. Catherine Austin Fitts (a former HUD Assistant Secretary), who insists a “black budget” exists on this planet that is draining trillions of dollars annually out of earth’s economy, has been working to find more solid evidence for “black projects.” But so far there are only bits here and there.

Courtney Brown, the remote viewing guy, has been laying low since the release of the first part of his latest project – the JFK assassination. Hopefully he is finishing the second part, but is behind schedule on this. The first part – predictably – found several professional snipers involved, and not the “lone nut” Oswald, as maintained by the Warren Commission. The second part promises to go more deeply into the plot.

So here in the freezing cold of a Frosted Thanksgiving, I learn more about the “unofficial” history of our planet, while making art out of old electronic equipment…

In 1913 the United States federal government finalized two major political and economic shifts: Federal income tax was made constitutional by the 16th Amendment, and the Federal Reserve Act was passed on 23 December. Both these actions were pushed onto the American people and their duly-elected representatives by European banking interests on false pretenses. Threat of force was also used to obtain compliance to these plans.

Since then, European banking interests have been creating wars and other economic and political calamities and getting the United States involved using lies and propaganda. The United States then borrows money to pay for these things from the Federal Reserve, and the interest and some principal is paid back using Income Tax.

Later, following another created economic catastrophe (the Great Depression and Dust Bowl), Social Security was introduced (1935) in order to “force” people to save for their old age. But the Social Security Trust funds as well as many pension funds, have been stolen from in order to finance the aforementioned illegal expenses.

On top of all this, it has been discovered that the United States of America is actually a private corporation not owned or operated by the American people.

Thus it is apparent that the “national debt” is not a debt owed by the American people, but a debt incurred illegally by the U.S.A. and owed TO the American people, as they paid for it with their income taxes, their hard work, and their lives (in the case of soldiers dying in war, etc.).

We as a people have a perfect right to cut the U.S.A. (federal government) loose from us, stop paying all Federal Income Tax, and demand reparations. They can start figuring out how to raise the funds to pay their debts in some other way. They already take a cut from the drug cartels for protecting their overseas and domestic operations, and have a Secret Space Program that reportedly trades goods with 900 off-world civilizations.

On November 11, 1918, warring parties in Europe signed an “armistice” which ended the fighting between the Allies and Germany and resulted, six months later, in the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War One.

My great-grandfather Edward Cox, by then a long-time resident of Vancouver, Canada, though English by birth, who was bandmaster of the city band at that time, was put in charge of providing music to help the city celebrate the signing of the Armistice.

Here in his own words, dictated later to the City Archivist, is an account of what happened on that day:

“What happened on that great occasion was this. The news came about midnight. Next morning I called up the President (Hr. George Kidd, I think) of the B. C. Electric Railway, and asked if I may have the sight seeing street car – open top. Mr. Kidd replied, “It will be ready when you want it down at the corner of Cambie and Hastings. There will be a conductor and motorman; you tell them what to do.” I asked that it be there at 10 a.m. and it was. I said that I was not able to pay. He replied, “It is at your service as the contribution of the B. C. Electric Railway Company.”

“I assembled my 72nd Seaforths band at my place of business on Cordova Street between Homer and Cambie Streets. The Mayor of Vancouver was His Worship Mayor Gale, and he placed all bands under my charge – twelve bands in all. There was little preparatory organization, there were many musicians, some of them returned soldiers, some had instruments – some without. I had to purchase three instruments out of my own purse. Altogether I had one hundred and fifty men. Out of these I picked twelve leaders as bandmasters; then gave each leader twelve men according to their instruments, and away they went, some on floats, some marching on foot. The sight seeing street car with band playing went everywhere – over every line. We allowed no one on except returned soldiers, and many of these accompanied us. We went up Mt. Pleasant, Fairview, West End, everywhere, playing as we went, and except for intervals for meals, did not cease playing on that sight seeing street car until 10 o’clock that night. Some musicians stayed the entire time, some would retire, new ones take their places, some come, some go, it was a wild day of jollification, no order, no system, but everywhere harmony and co-operation. I supplied all the music. I had about 400 marches in my library. We played “Tipparary,” “Keep the Home Fire Burning,” “Pack Up Your Troubles,” “Long, Long Trail,” and other popular ones of the period. “Colonel Bogie” was a great favorite.

“I just divided the 150 men into 12 bands under a leader, gave them their music, told them their position in the line of march and left them ‘go to it.’ It was a glorious moment.”

It was a real thrill to find this interview in the Vancouver City Archives when I visited there in 1972. I’ve always wanted to share this portion with a wider audience.

The idea of making interactive art didn’t occur to me until rather recently. I got into electronics via audio – amplifiers and the like – and then started getting interested in music synthesis. Later I got into measurements, digital control, and computers.

During my Sea Org years I realized that not many people knew about basic electricity and electronics, yet Hubbard was using examples from those subjects in his books and lectures. So that gave me the idea of a learning lab centered around electronics. The Exploratorium in San Francisco is an example of an interactive learning environment. I wanted to do something like that at home.

It was not until 2009, when I had a lot of time on my hands but not much cash, that I started buying used gadgets at Goodwill and re-purposing them at my workbench. It was at this point that I started working on interactive “art” designs – possibly inspired by Halloween.

Making interactive art installations using electronics is certainly not an original idea with me. There are lots of examples out there, from merely cute to ponderously imposing. I was thinking in terms of something someone might have in a room at home, that would sort of “wake up” and start doing things when people came in. The development of such a system, though, was a lot more involved than I originally imagined. I still don’t have a fully interactive “dream” system up and running. But I have lots of pieces of one, and I needed a way to tie them all together.

The numbers of inputs and outputs that would probably be needed to develop such a system was difficult for me to confront. I imagined something like the old MOOG synthesizers – a mass of patch cables. But nothing seemed to come together until I purchased a used Extron video switching system for the aluminum enclosure, and found out what the back panel looked like. More signal connectors on one panel than I’d ever seen before! Finally I started working on a couple such panels to modify them to do what I thought I would need. It was not the easiest project I’ve ever attempted, but it’s beginning to be actually usable.

Technical details

I have chosen the 19-inch rack-mount form factor for my work. It is the most widely-used mounting system for professional equipment. The average rack cabinet, however, is designed for enclosures that are rather deep (more than a foot), while the things I am making are quite shallow (less than 1/2 a foot). But moving beyond the 19-inch equipment rack is another project.

Let’s go through the equipment in the top photo:
1) A row of four voltage-controlled fans, inspired by a TED Talk I saw of a guy who did some amazing things with remote-controlled fans.
2) Example of a piece of used equipment, not yet re-purposed.
3) A system for developing Arduino projects, made from a used enclosure, of course.
4) My matrix of connectors, used to route various control signals to displays or similar devices. You can see that this isn’t finished yet; none of the controls have knobs!

So far I only have a few displays and sensors to experiment with. But several others are just waiting to be finished.

Audio in or audio out?

In another part of the room, my audio rack has been newly re-assembled.

While my interactive art focuses on sound and motion as inputs and light patterns as outputs, on this rack the output is sound. That means it includes two speakers and a stereo amp, effects to be applied to sound inputs, and the beginnings of a synthesizer. Also included is my latest version of my “LED oscilloscope” and tone generator.

Equipment rack for audio projects.

Everything is made from used gear re-purposed for what I want it to do. And all these projects are in a constant state of re-development. I keep older gear until I find or make something better to replace it with. The older stuff gets trashed or re-used inside newer projects.

Organize or perish!

The decision to organize better did not come easily. Organizing and rebuilding old equipment takes time, so I can only do so much of it. But it is a rock-solid basic ingredient to making any activity viable. So I’ve been pushing it forward, and wanted to document the current scene.